It could be the end of TV as we know it. This Saturday sees the first ever competitive England international game to be available online exclusively. Viewers will be able to watch the group qualifier via a live stream for a fee of £9.99 from Thursday, going up to £11.99 on Saturday. This has caused much anger amongst supporters as it means that the traditional pint will be of different sorts as pubs will not be able to show the game. It is however, being shown at some Odeon Cinemas around the country.
This situation arose from the collapse of Setanta, who had the rights to show all of England's group games, and also the lack of sufficient bids for the rights from other TV networks resulting in the game not being televised. The Kentaro Group now have the rights to show the game, and have chosen the web as platform to broadcast it.
Coverage starts from 4.45pm on Saturday, and with the company claiming that streamed games are the way forward in the digital revolution. The modern technology available means that internet users wanting to be in more control of what, where and when they watch their favourite programs. But, there are certain things with tradition, where decades of gathering round the TV to watch epic football matches has become the norm. If streamed matches catches on despite it's obvious disadvantages it could mean the end of this traditon, the end of viewing sports on TV!
Thankfully the game has no significance for England as their qualification from the group is already secured. It will be somewhat bizzare in the future to invite the guys round to watch the game on...err the 19" screen with 2.1 stereo sound..maybe we can take turns to watch!
5 comments:
For everyone else, there's always myp2p.eu :)
I personally don't think it's the end of TV. This is hopefully going to be a massive failure since England are already through and the big match this Saturday is undoubtedly Russia v/s the mighty Germans!! There are also plans afoot to boycott this venture.
Sports on TV is still big here, especially for a sport like football which is the favourite sport of the working class and the middle class (unlike cricket and rugby for example). Football is already on the net by the way, I used to have a skysports subscription to watch matches online. But sports on TV will always be around.
well one day there might really be the end of TV as everything is being converged to new media...we can now watch TV on mobile phone and PC...we even can create our own media diet with TV series made available on the web...you just have to make a list of what you wanna watch and instead of adhering to the traditional TV schedule u have your own now...cheers:-)
Progress huh. Why des it always seem to go backwards
@Carrotmadman6 do you know if myp2p.eu or any other webstream showed the Eng match?
@Yashi Yea i think sports is too big a business opportunity for broadcasters to ignore.
@Gaia I agree to certain extent. New media means that people can choose what they want to watch, when they watch it and how they watch it. But when it comes to live sports it's really 'how' that can change, 'when' and 'what' are unaffected because it's live and is already specific.
@Mo possibly we have to make mistakes to learn from them :)
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